


What You Are, And What You've Been

by Gargant



Category: Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: Everyone Has PTSD In Spira, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Original Character(s), original child character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22602550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gargant/pseuds/Gargant
Summary: The Crimson Squad have survived some terrible things—but who in Spira hasn't? A conversation with an Al Bhed child leads Gippal and Baralai to confront their own experiences. But how do you explain trauma to someone else when you barely have the courage to explain it to yourself?
Relationships: Baralai/Gippal (Final Fantasy X-2)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	What You Are, And What You've Been

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Welsper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welsper/gifts).



> I have seen you around many exchanges before now, and was thrilled to finally match with you! I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Almost a full year since the destruction of Vegnagun. Almost a full year since Shuyin was finally sent to rest, and the leaders of Spira's splintered factions stood together in the stadium of Luca to promise reconciliation and progress.

And even now, there were still so many among the ranks of New Yevon who protested at seeing the Al Bhed taking residence in Djose Temple.

In truth, Baralai had always been able to understand their concerns. In such a short space of time, a site once considered sacred to Yevon had become overrun with people long considered to be infidels. Worse still, those same people were filling the temple with machina, the same kinds of machina that had been forbidden for hundreds of years. It was no small wonder that some people struggled with so much change happening so fast.

He understood. As Praetor of New Yevon, it was his _mission_ to understand that kind of thinking. But in a world without Sin, the Al Bhed had just as much right to the hospitality of Djose as anyone. Gently, but unyielding, Baralai stood before his council and made his decision plain. New Yevon would not stand in opposition to the Machine Faction. The Al Bhed were free to use Djose as they wished.

If anyone suspected he had selfish motivations, they had the grace to keep such ideas to themselves.

Djose, and her Machine Faction, had become a source of great comfort for him. Yes, there were times where he wished he might have had the freedom to visit in the past, when the fayth had still been in residence here. But every time he crossed the footbridges that led to Djose Temple's great stone doors, Baralai immersed himself in the hive of Al Bhed activity and, for a time, he forgot. He couldn't help but sink into everything that set this place apart from life in the pristine heart of Bevelle; the queues of aspiring workhands seeking whatever labour the Machine Faction might have to offer, the rowdy bustle of Al Bhed merchants plying their wares, even the discarded piles of machina that littered every spare inch of ground. He'd come to know and appreciate it all.

And, above all, most comforting of all; Gippal. Gippal was always here.

But today, it hadn't been Gippal who hurried out to greet him first. While familiar faces glanced up at his arrival and cheerfully hurried off to find their ever-busy leader, it was a young girl with bright green eyes and scruffy brown hair who ran up to grab his hand and drag him inside. Irami. An orphan, like so many others.

She had arrived in Djose as unwanted baggage, or so Gippal had explained to him. The men who left her at Djose were scions of Yevon, ex-Crusaders and humble villagefolk, and Irami's green-swirled eyes had given away her Al Bhed heritage. These were people too good-natured to cast out a lost child, but too set in their ways to risk bringing an Al Bhed into their homes to be raised among their own.

_So they gave her to us_ , Gippal had told him, with that faintly satirical undercurrent that often edged into his tone when he spoke such things. Baralai had wondered, not for the first time, how any of them managed to stand it. He, a spoiled child of Yevon's heartland, could never truly hope to understand.

According to Gippal she had been near-mute on arrival, and what few words she did speak were sometimes in Al Bhed and sometimes not. It seemed that life in Djose suited her, though; slowly but surely she had grown more confident in speaking her native tongue, and the steady flow of visitors had kept her well-practiced in the other common tongues of Spira. Baralai had been glad to hear of her rapid progress, and was gladder still when Gippal finally arranged a chance for them to meet.

Of course, she'd been seized by the kind of shyness so often experienced by children when faced with an unfamiliar face. But it hadn't taken long for her to begin opening up in his presence, not least of all because of Gippal's insistence on referring to Baralai as his _special_ friend. Whatever embarrassment Baralai might have felt at the ridiculous moniker was easily balanced by seeing Gippal and Irami's cheerful interactions. It didn't surprise him at all to learn how good Gippal was with children. From what Baralai had seen, Gippal was good with _people_ —an engineer in the truest sense, as capable of fixing hearts as he was his beloved machina.

So the months has passed, and Irami had become more and more confident. Now she could be found darting around the temple grounds as though she'd always been there, carrying messages between Faction members and finding ways to get underfoot in her constant quest to understand what everyone else was up to. Whenever business brought Baralai visiting—not nearly often enough, no matter how he tried to wrestle his schedule—he always made an effort to seek her out and ask how she fared. For her part, Irami always seemed delighted to see him. If she was more excited for the sweet Bevellian pastries he always brought with him, well... it wasn't the worst bit of bribery he'd committed in his time with New Yevon. Concealed in a robe pocket and wrapped in cloth and string, the journey from Bevelle usually rendered each treat a flat and sticky mess by the time he was able to deliver it into her hands. Nonetheless she always received them with a delighted grin, and wasted no time in getting herself covered in sugary confection.

So it was that Baralai found himself watching her, seated in the shadow of High Summoner Yocun's great statue and licking her fingers clean, when Gippal finally emerged from the heart of the temple to grab him into a familiar embrace.

"When did you get here?" Was his first question, accompanied by his usual charmingly lopsided smile. It was obvious just from looking that Gippal had been knee deep in mechanical work before word of Baralai's arrival had reached him; if he was aware of the black oily streak smeared across his brow, he wasn't showing any signs of it. Baralai couldn't quite repress his own amusement at the sight, even as he surreptitiously took a careful step backwards.

"Just now. Don't worry. I've had good company."

"Good company, sure, but not the _best_ ," Gippal replied, so casual in his confidence. Baralai had been been certain how much of it was sincere and how much was just for show. Either way, it really had no right to be as charming as it was. "You've been chatting up Irami, huh?"

Baralai cleared his throat. "That's not how I would put it, but yes."

"You've been buttering her up with sweets again, you flirt. It's enough to make a guy jealous." Quite the wild accusation, and one that might have caused offense if Gippal hadn't backed the words up with a wink and a smile. But then his expression turned more contemplative, one hand ruffling back through his messy blond hair as he asked, "Did she tell you anything about her dreams?"

Dreams? "No, not at all." The tone alone told Baralai something was amiss. "Is she unwell?"

"Something like that." Gippal drew a weary breath, his gazing drifting over to rest on the Al Bhed girl. "She keeps saying she doesn't want to sleep any more. Too many bad dreams. Figured she might have said something to you." Grinning, Gippal shot him a sly look. "You being her favourite person and all."

"I don't know about that," Baralai replied, too familiar with Gippal's nonsense to get goaded so easily. "But we haven't spoken much yet." Beyond greetings and gift-givings there hadn't been much chance. Baralai reached over to trace a finger along the back of Gippal's hand. "Let me try talking to her. _You_ , my friend, need to take a look in a mirror."

Belatedly, Gippal pressed his hands against his chest in an expression of mock-offense. "What, you telling me you don't like a man in uniform?"

"And engine grease counts for a uniform, does it?"

"Does for some of us." Looking pleased with himself, he added, "You wouldn't like me prim and proper anyway."

Baralai knew better than to try and argue himself out of that corner. "Go clean up. I'm not going anywhere."

"Better not," Gippal warned with a smile, darting in to kiss Baralai's cheek before jogging off across the temple floor to get himself tidied up. If they'd been in Bevelle, even that small show of emotion would have turned scandalised heads. Here, Gippal's behaviour barely warranted notice, much less scrutiny.

Was it really any wonder he couldn't stay away?

By the time Gippal returned, looking very much the same but for an artful rearranging of his hair and a removal of smudging from his features, Irami was quietly telling Baralai a story he very much doubted she enjoyed sharing.

"I didn't think I was there," She told him, barely above a whisper. "But my dreams think I was."

Peripherally, Baralai was aware of Gippal's footsteps slowing. He would remember to thank him for that later. "Sometimes, other people's stories can give us dreams, " He replied, not unkindly. "And sometimes, stories can make us remember things we forgot."

Cross-legged and thoughtful, Irami frowned consideration of his words. "Did I remember it?"

"Maybe." He doesn't have any authority to tell her what might be truth and what her mind might have conjured up from the stories people had told her. But the things she had described from her dreams had left Baralai with no doubt about one important detail—Irami was dreaming of the Guado attack on Home.

He was prepared to say something more, but she interrupted him with her next question. "But how did I forget?"

A question so profound and so simple. There was no way to know old Irami was without parents to name a date, but Gippal had guessed her at five or six years and Baralai was inclined to agree. That would have made her little more than a toddler when Home had been destroyed. "You would have been very young," He said, hoping the answer wouldn't sound like dismissal to her ears. "We all find it hard to remember things from when we were small."

"Mm." Her response was small, noncommittal. There was more he could say to her. He shouldn't. It wasn't right to burden a child.

Somehow, the words came anyway. "Sometimes," Baralai heard himself saying, "A memory is so terrible, your mind makes you forget. It tries to protect you from what you saw. Or what you did." _What Shuyin did_ , a voice like Gippal's tried to correct in the back of his mind. Baralai would have liked to rely on that comforting lie, but he knew too well how much shame was his to bear. He knew what Shuyin had been responsible for, and the horrors that lay in those memories. But he knew as well the crimes that had been committed by his own two hands. The mistrust and anger he had felt deep in his own gut; the weakness and insecurity that had made him perfect prey for Shuyin's undying hate.

Irami's expression had grown all the more solemn. "How do you stop remembering?"

Would that he knew.

"You can't." He knew he should comfort her, but when he lifted a hand to place around her shoulders he found his fingers shaking and hurriedly drew his fists back into the curl of his own lap. Even after all this time...? "You can't forget what you saw." His voice sounded reedy to his own ears. "Or what you felt. It's too much."

"But that's okay," Gippal's voice interrupted. Baralai jolted from his wounded reverie, his face immediately flushing with warm shame at being caught in such self-indulgent weakness. Irami simply shuffled in closer as Gippal settled down to join them, cheerfully climbing into his lap when he offered one hand out to her. Gippal's other arm reached out to wrap around Baralai's waist—too ashamed to accept the comfort but too weak to turn it away, Baralai let himself get gathered in closer. "Everyone has things they wish they could forget, but we have to remember it for the sake of the people who can't."

"Okay," Irami replied immediately, though the lack of comprehension was clear on her face. Gippal must have recognised it too.

"When Home was destroyed, people died." It would have been hypocritical for him to interrupt Gippal after his own awkward attempts to make her feel better, but Baralai couldn't help but shoot Gippal a quelling look. But Gippal continued, undeterred in saying what he needed to say. "Those people, they can't remember what happened any more. That's why me and you and all our friends, we gotta remember it for them. We're the only ones who can do that now. It's our job to rememeber it, and learn from it, and make sure no one else ever has to have something that bad happen to them. Do you think we can do that for them?"

"Yeah," Irami answered again, just as quickly as before. But then she frowned, as though finally grappling with the weight of what was being asked of her.

"Gippal..." Baralai murmured, still stuck somewhere between warning and appreciation. But then Irami twisted in Gippal's lap to look up at them both, and Baralai couldn't ignore the light that seemed to have kindled in her tired eyes.

"Do you think that will make my dreams stop?" She asked. "If I promise to remember?"

"I think so," Gippal told her, with just the sort of brash confidence that was perfectly suited to bolstering the spirits of a child. Irami grinned brilliantly up at him. "But if you have a bad dream, you just come right and find me and we'll beat it up together, deal?"

"Deal!" Uplifted, she clambered to her feet. "But I don't think I'm gonna dream tonight. Only a good dream. Feel better, okay?"

Her last remark was directed at Baralai, who had no choice but to smile and nod before she cheerfully darted away to find her next big adventure. Only after she'd left their sight did Baralai let himself deflate, finally giving in to leaning himself against Gippal's reassuring weight.

"That could have gone better," He conceded, his chuckle low and self-deprecating. Gippal's arm, still tucked around his waist, gave a gentle squeeze.

"You're still keeping things bottled up." From anyone else it might have sounded accusatory, but Gippal's chiding tone couldn't belie the concern that underpined his words. "When you gonna learn, huh?"

"To tell you the truth, I thought I _had_ learned that lesson." Who would have thought it would be the innocent questions of a child that would confront him with his own lingering failures. Baralai closed his eyes, thinking again of the blood that still stained his hands—the blood that continued to stain his own memories. "Do you...?"

It was difficult to say the words. Gippal understood what lay in his silence. "Dream about it? Sure do. I reckon even Paine has nightmares about what happened back there, and that girl's half a nightmare herself."

If Gippal was trying to coax him into laughter, it worked. "She wouldn't let you get away with saying that, you know."

"And that's exactly what I'm talking about. Dr. P, our very own nightmare." Baralai had the feeling Gippal would have liked to keep joking, but instead he sighed, head tilted to rest against Baralai's own. "What happened in that cave, and when we went after Vegnagun? I think about it all the time."

"Anyone would," Baralai told him. In the pause that followed he knew Gippal was waiting for him to say something more; it took more effort than he wanted to admit to make the next words come. "I dream about it, it's hard to tell what... it's hard to tell which feelings are mine, and which feelings are _his_. Too much of it still makes sense to me. Like all those feelings were a real part of me."

Even now, with this man he trusted above any other, Baralai half expected to have such an admission rejected. Instead, Gippal shrugged. "They were your feelings, right? For a while there, anyways. Don't think about it too hard. It's okay."

Baralai wished he could accept the comforting simplicity of that answer. But how could he accept something so awful? How could Gippal accept it so easily? "I don't want that to be true," He admitted softly; and breathed out, letting catharsis flow through him. He hated it, but he needed to say it. Needed to admit to someone else just how close Shuyin's hatred had some to his own, and to give himself this small private space to be childish about it. "I don't want it to be true. I don't want to have been that weak."

"Hey now." Once again Gippal chided him, and once again Baralai had to smile at the warmth lying behind those words. "Weak, strong? Whatever. That's got nothing to do with it. _You_ came back to us. We all made it out alive. That's the only thing I care about."

"Yeah." He wished they weren't sat out in the open like this. He wished they were someplace quiet, out of sight, where he could keep Gippal in his arms and the two of them could dream in the safety of this moment for as long as they needed it.

But they would have all night for that, after business had been taken care of. If he let himself linger here much longer, he wasn't sure he would have the strength to get back up again. "Yeah," Baralai repeated again, and let himself squeeze closer to Gippal's warmth for one more comforting second. Then he rose with a stiff sigh, extending a hand to help pull Gippal back to his feet.

And Gippal accepted, but not before shooting him a stern look—incongruous with that charming lopsided smile of his. "And listen, you. You have a bad dream, you come and find me."

Just like he'd already said to Irami. Baralai chuckled to himself, squeezing Gippal's hand as he climbed to his feet. "I come and find you, and then we beat it up?"  
"You know it!"

As though Gippal himself hadn't just confessed to have dreams of his own. Baralai laced their fingers, lifting his other hand to brush his knuckles along Gippal's freshly washed cheek. "Only if you promise me you'll do the same. You always know where to find me." He doesn't mean for the last part to escape him. "Even when I don't know where to find myself."

Gippal doesn't let him sink into the melancholy. "I'm counting on you, then. It's a deal, Baralai."

"Mm." The Djose Temple, the Machine Faction, and here, beside him, this man. Gippal. The greatest comfort he knows. "It's a deal."


End file.
